by Janny Wurts
'Say on,' she demanded, pressed by reckless fear. 'I will not believe that Arithon chose to abandon his fate without fighting.'
'You will not like the method' Dakar shivered, fussed by his glaring reluctance as he skirted the explosive disclosure. 'Winter solstice, at Athir, can be made to invoke Rathain's sanctioned tie through the land.'
Her recoiling cry, as she grasped the cruel gist, slipped her whitened lips before thought. 'No! That would conceive his child! Under Selidie's binding, I can't ever -'
But the spellbinder whose loyalty upheld the succession met her cringing nerve with no mercy. 'Then Glendien must assay the rite in your place. I have asked her, yes! She's already told me she's willing to try!' Against that horrified jolt of deception; into the teeth of an undying love's speechless fury, he bore in. 'Arithon swore an oath to survive in let blood to the Fellowship Sorcerers! Here, where his Grace knelt before Asandir to receive the seal over the knife-cut, the ocean sand keeps the imprinted charge of that promise. Koriathain! I tell you, on no terms do you realize the cause that marries the realm to an Atheran crown prince.'
Elaira stayed obdurate. 'You will not proceed with this!' Wild-cat angry, poised over her prostrate beloved, she lashed out. 'What friend would dare even think to betray him with another woman as surrogate! I'll not grant you the keys to Arithon's heart! Never for your unscrupulous usage to salvage the throne of Rathain.'
Dakar shrugged, already braced for that blast of indelicate argument. 'But I know the keys, lady.' Past grace, he insisted, "They've been shared already, given into my keeping since the moment Kharadmon disrupted your misspent union in Halwythwood.'
'Dharkaron Avenge me for that violation!' swore Elaira, drained beyond pale. 'You wouldn't!'
Footsteps pelted, outside. Her distress had drawn notice. Glendien burst in, panting and flushed, her red hair soaked, and her clothing half-laced in a sprint from the well that expected to thwart bloody mayhem.
She stepped into a tempest; with her husband's drawn knife at guard point, and measured the furious combatants. Then saw Elaira's fingers, protectively clasped over Arithon's pillowed head. 'You've told her!' she snapped. Her vitriolic glance flicked back to Dakar, who was harrowed enough to cringe outright.
Elaira said, stony, oblivious to the tears that silvered her eyes. 'Glendien? How can you become a consenting party to this? You once tested Arithon's inner fibre! Could you sell out his helpless integrity while he's unconscious?'
Yet on that point, clan custom was adamant. 'I cannot let Kyrialt's death go for naught! My own gave himself to save Rathain's blood-line! How could I cavil, when what's asked of me is far less?' Since the naked blade in her hand was now trembling, Glendien rammed the steel into the scabbard. 'Once, Arithon said the life of my husband outweighed his personal dignity. For his honour's sake, should that choice be reversed?' Against Elaira's horrified pain, she defended, 'Would you let his Grace die? That's unnatural jealousy! I've agreed with Dakar. The attempt must go forward. Forget personal sacrifice! This may be the last chance we have to save the descent of Rathain's crown lineage.'
Elaira looked, one to the other, and measured the tenor of raised opposition: Dakar, with his mussed clothing and smudged, moon-calf face far removed from the scapegrace buffoon. Then Glendien's ripe and sensual allure, once defeated in a blazing assault against Arithon's private will, and now reclothed in the razor-sharp mourning of a widow's determination.
'By Ath, you're both serious.' Suspicion pricked through, that the adamant silence imposed by Sethvir in cold fact may have been deliberate. 'Tell me, Dakar! Has Althain's Warden withdrawn his counsel on purpose?'
Would the Sorcerers gamble with her wounded pride, that a royal birth might be snatched from the cross-roads of choice set before her?
Yet the spellbinder lacked a Prime Matriarch's connivance, to pour salt on the sting of her misery. 'No. Elaira, I can't lie. Not for this. The Warden bade me to bring us to Athir. Though I must speak for the weal of the land, whose power shall bid for Prince Arithon's life will be left in your hands to decide.'
'My voice casts his lot? Between Fellowship directives and the machinations of Koriathain?' Elaira withstood the urge to shut her streaming eyes; crushed the howling need to go deaf before forcing her harrowed wits to probe further. Then Sethvir steered you to this ugly course to restore my love's scattered awareness?'
'No.' Dakar found his courage and matched her regard. 'The inspiration was mine. Once, at Rockfell Peak, I linked awareness with Kharadmon. Rathain was imperilled. Lent the Sorcerer's insight, I observed as Arithon achieved a mastery that harnessed the lane tides. The imprint left me with the access to knowledge. In depth, I saw how the attuned tie at sanctioning binds a crown heir to the realm.'
Beside him, Glendien listened, endurance pitched to withstand grieving loss in support of a need that held meaning.
'That this accursed day had never arrived, or I had not been born to shoulder this sorrow, laid on me.' Elaira sat, shattered beneath the hurtful crux placed before her. 'Leave us! I can't bear your presence, or think!'
The choice became hers. If Arithon was not to be abandoned to death, she must decree which way the brand of lasting betrayal fell on him: to serve love's integrity, she must fulfil the vicious triumph of Selidie's high-stakes conspiracy. The Prime's implanted sigil would run its dire course, and a talented girl-child of her and Arithon's private begetting would be bequeathed to a lifelong enslavement by Koriathain. Or she must forsake the priceless gift of his heart: let Glendien's rape saddle him, or his offspring, with the burden of Rathain's royal heritage, constrained under the law by the Fellowship.
* * *
When Talvish returned, by Elaira's request, his sword stood guard for Prince Arithon. His oathsworn hand became her trusted bastion, as she walked the swept shingle to weigh her fate's path, under the cold stars of Athir. Love's grace lent her no surcease from her inner turmoil. She had no guidance, beyond her own heart; no word of reassurance to uplift or buoy her. Only the distanced memory of another night, lit by a fire the Sorcerer Traithe had laid on another desolate shore-line. His word to her then, imparted in kindness, had been of an augury shown to the Warden of Althain. For good or ill, she was the one spirit alive who would come to know Arithon best. 'Should your Master of Shadows fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.'
A stumbling step, as a coarse stand of dune grass entangled her ankle. Winter wind and sea-spray were not cruel enough to strip her savaged nerves numb. The silvery sheen of the Paravian haunts showed her naught but their silence. Elaira pulled her damp mantle close. She swore herself breathless with rage, then, emptied, scoured her being for the wisdom gained from her study among Ath's adepts. 'How do you feel? What do you believe? Where does your heart's whisper lead you?'
But the life she was asked to speak for was not hers. How did she dare to summon such courage, or fathom a judgement that set her responsible word over Arithon's survival? Give him to death, uncontested, or bid for his life through a binding compromise? Where did love cede her the right?
How would he feel? What did he believe? Where might his heart's whisper lead him?
Above her bowed head, through her agonized turmoil, the winter stars whose clear singing had drawn him past hearing shone down on her tormented grief. She cried to their implacable majesty, broken, 'How would my beloved choose for himself, if he stood here beside me?'
'Listen,' Arithon had said. Once, on the ship's deck, when Sulfin Evend's bared sword gleamed above him, thirsty to kill over principle, his thought had reached her like struck crystal. 'Listen!'
But here lay only the voice of the land, bare of his human warmth and encouragement. The thrash of the ocean breakers rolled in, their tumbling rush hurling laceworks of foam that erased the print of her footsteps. Elaira sat on the chill crest of a dune. Sensed the place, there on the lonely strand, where a crown prince had sworn on his let blood to live, come whatever cost and against every concept of sac
rifice. Knowing that Dakar must honour that oath, she sorted her disparate memories. One by cherished one, she reviewed her encounters with the mated spirit become an inseparable part of her. And there, she found Arithon's unalloyed words, framed by the trust of unbounded rapport, while she had been made one with his innermost being during his passage through Kewar.
'... take my permission here and now,' he had stated, with regard to the peril of entrapment posed through her by the Matriarch's meddling. 'Should my life become threatened, don't lie, beloved. Even had I not sworn my oath to the Fellowship, I could no more watch you die than cease breathing. My love for you will not suffer false promises. Honour my preference, but only if you are able. For myself, in plain truth, I lack the fibre to hold firm and see you take harm.'
She had seen his depths laid bare to her then: before letting her perish, Arithon would have indebted himself to the Koriani Prime Council a hundred times over.
Could she do any less for his sake and not risk destroying the selfsame integrity by which he held his life sacrosanct?
While, in far-off Sanpashir a Biedar Eldest also shared waking vigil, Elaira addressed the black vault of the sky, mystery written across by the glory of Athera's constellations. These, the same stars whose Paravian Name wove the chord that endowed Alithiel's transcendent harmony, and now held her beloved spirit-bound. 'If I err acting in your behalf,' she addressed his cold absence, 'then I must lean on my faith in our love. Surely, between us, we can find the strength for an unbounded forgiveness.'
Against the raw wind, she arose, the race of her heart at last quieted. She left the shore and re-entered the ruin to shoulder the unthinkable course.
Inside the tent shelter within tumbled walls, a single rushlight stayed burning. A neat, clansman's fire boiled a stew that no one found stomach to sample. Talvish maintained steadfast watch by the pallet, guarding Arithon's inviolate privacy. Parrien looked on, alert as a weasel, as Elaira shoved through the canvas flap.
She faced Dakar and Glendien, then spoke her mind. 'This night, no one sleeps. I will not suffer longer, or stand aside while this limbo of dreaming robs Arithon's health and vitality.'
The spellbinder said nothing. If the clanswoman coveted a personal stake, she laid down the skinning knife used to clean pelts with the grace not to show untoward eagerness. As the tireless pound of the sea through the quiet stripped every vibrating nerve, Talvish made the soft inquiry. 'You'll not wait for the safer timing at solstice, or evoke the crown oath to the kingdom?'
Elaira lost voice. Withstood the awful, terrified moment she needed to bridle her terror. When she answered, she had steadied again, strengthened by icy conviction. 'The realm's throne has no claim, here. Arithon's adamant preference swore the blood oath to preserve his life. He did not bend his will for the weight of a crown when he granted commitment at Athir. I would rather remand him to a fight against enemies than consign him to the stagnation of traps spun by those who call themselves friends'
Her passion broke through to fresh tears, as, even now, the fat spellbinder dared the breath to belabour her with reasoned protest.
'You wish your prince living?' she pealed, past restraint. 'Or dead of the trust that you will murder outright if you attempt the false road by manipulative betrayal. We will act now, or not at all, if my hand must direct the proceedings.'
Dakar shoved erect in the tumble of blankets that had not brought the comfort of sleep. 'You're insane!' he lashed out, appalled. 'You will use your love under vow and sell his Grace over to your Prime Matriarch?'
'No,' said Elaira, razed to dread for necessity. 'But I will take the lead in this dangerous dance. I need Glendien's help. And yours also, backed by the authority of the Fellowship Sorcerers. If you'll give clean consent to what has to be tried, here is how we're going to proceed.'
* * *
For what she proposed, there were no guarantees. Only bare hope, that Arithon's strayed spirit could respond to her love, impelled by no more than her bonded rapport, kept inviolate and untarnished. Parrien carried the unconscious prince to the site of the Paravian focus. There, Arithon was laid down, wrapped in Davien's black mantle, atop a rough bed of dune grass. If the lane force purling through the patterned stone inlay touched through to his distanced awareness, no colour quickened his flesh. The bitter wind flicked his hair, unregarded, while the darkness attendant upon his slack form remained fathomless as loomed velvet. Dawn seemed far off. The angled features lit by the torch Dakar held seemed no more alive than carved ivory.
Undaunted, Elaira asked Talvish to kneel. As trusted crown liegeman, his solemn oath to stand watch for Prince Arithon must be witnessed and sealed first of all. Elaira embarked upon every small safeguard. No part of the poisonous bargain she struck would be left to lapse, or fall forfeit.
The swordsman bared his blond head and crossed his hands on the hilt of Alithiel. Quiet voice clear through the thrash of the sea, beating the headland at Athir, he declared the terms of life service under which he extended protection. 'As I am appointed my prince's right arm, be assured of my word, sworn in my Name under grace of Ath's light, and upheld by Dharkaron's Black Spear should I falter'
Elaira raised him with her own hands. Her swift embrace shored up his lanky height, as he lost words for her unbounded courage. 'No friend has done better,' she told him. 'Whatever comes, you hold as worthy a place as any of Jieret's Companions.'
Beneath the unshielded blaze of the stars crowning the sky overhead, she let Talvish go to assume his post on the line that demarked the south quadrant.
Of the barriers woven by Selidie's malice, and the entanglements blood-sworn to a Sorcerer, Elaira did as she must, and called Dakar forward to make disposition. She could not thwart fate without drawing, in part, on the knowledge derived from her order. Therefore, she asked the spellbinder to swear oath of debt, that no blank line should be left for Koriani interests to interpret. 'You will not bind over the Name of Arithon s'Ffalenn,' she decreed with explicit directness. "The bond will be assumed against the Crown of Rathain, which must answer to Fellowship precepts.'
'Ah, clever!' crowed Parrien, against Dakar's stiff misery. 'Leave it to women, for stickling bargains to strangle posterity!' For the fine point she accomplished by invoking crown law would involve the Sorcerers, should the Prime Matriarch move to collect.
'I am not Sethvir, to read all angles of nuance,' Dakar warned, chilled beyond what the winter air warranted.
Elaira bowed her head. 'I don't claim that vision. My faith rests with your masters, who will keep their covenant. More powerful wisdom than yours, or mine, must determine how tonight's knot unwinds in the future.' She would not risk their child; never chance the unconscionable betrayal, that the prodigious gifts of the Teir's'Ffalenn's lineage could become the vessel to shape the Prime Matriarch's ambition to groom a successor.
Dakar ceded his case. To hold Elaira's love clear of the mire, and secure her help to spare Arithon, all else must tread the razor's edge: such brazen effrontery must serve to thwart the enslavement of an unborn child. Rife uncertainty triggered no errant augury, either to warn or to guide him; no contact from Althain Tower forbade, as he handed his torch off to Parrien. Committed, Dakar entered the circle at Athir. He embraced the midnight crest of the lane tide and assumed the binding that crossed the sedition of the Koriathain with Fellowship stakes in Rathain's undetermined accession.
The last, and most critical part became Glendien's, to assume by free choice. Clad in a loose robe that belonged to Elaira, her loose hair scented with herbals, she came forward with her impertinent wit as armour to shield the raw wound of Kyrialt's absence. "Why sulk?' she accosted Dakar. The provocative pout to her lips was bravado, a poor effort to salvage torn pride. 'Don't we all get what we want in the end?'
'Don't cheapen your sacrifice.' With a depth of awareness untapped through five centuries of whoring debauchery, Dakar plumbed the fierce light in her tawny eyes and tested her feckless dismissal. 'Are you not offering up yo
ur own destiny in belated repayment for Arithon's selfless past gesture in Shand?'
'No.' Glendien ran her hands down her supple body, that beyond any question did not bear the quickened seed of her deceased mate. 'I give myself for the land's sake, and Kyrialt. This is not about my past blunders, or any flirtatious temptation to try the mettle of Rathain's prince. Keep your long nose in your own business, spellbinder! Enchantress or not, Elaira is woman enough to honour her private conscience.'
Already, the steps had been clearly laid out, with consent on acceptance made unconditional. The deep binding the enchantress proposed to entrain had been practised since time beyond memory by the order's advanced healers. 'You'll be enveloped by what feels like a normal sleep' Elaira reassured the clanswoman as she made preparations. 'Throughout the duration, you cannot change course. Although your awareness will not leave your flesh, you will stay gently held under the threshold of waking.'
The Atheran crystal unwrapped in her hand as she scribed the first circle for arcane containment also would grant oversight to Althain's Warden. Sethvir could intervene, should objection arise, if his earth-sourced attention was not deferred elsewhere. Elaira evoked no darkening veil of concealment. The boundary laid down by her order's skilled surgeons only ensured that no sensation would cross the spelled barrier; they sought by their working to mask fear and pain. Yet since nothing planned here would mar the flesh, Elaira left the last loop in the intricate cipher unclosed.
She told Glendien, 'If you allow Dakar's trust to stand guard for your spirit's integrity, I promise to leave you with the record of what your body has known, to ascertain your dignity stays intact, afterward.'
But never the memory of Arithon's shared heart! That distinction was not left in question.
'My dignity's scarcely at issue' declared Glendien. 'Ath above, don't I know? Your finicky prince is the one we're wringing ourselves dizzy, protecting.' The spelled circle was joined. She assumed the role given her; permitted Elaira to braid up her hair in the pattern familiar to Arithon's fingers. Provocative lest she should break in retreat, the clanswoman flipped Dakar a sensuous grin and crossed the grand arc of the focus.